The Tunka-Rex antenna station (ICRC 2013)

TL;DR

Tunka-Rex is a radio array in Siberia designed to measure air showers, aiming to assess the precision of radio detection for primary cosmic ray energy and mass, by analyzing hardware response and background signals.

Contribution

This paper details the hardware setup, response characterization, and systematic uncertainties of the Tunka-Rex radio detection array, advancing understanding of radio measurement accuracy.

Findings

Characterized the directional response of antennas.

Estimated systematic uncertainties in radio signal reconstruction.

Presented background measurements with actual antennas.

Abstract

Tunka-Rex is the radio extension of Tunka-133, a 1 km^2 air-Cherenkov Detector for air showers in Siberia. Tunka-Rex began operation on October 8th 2012 with 20 radio antennas. Its main goals are to explore the possible precision of the radio detection technique in determination of primary energy and mass. Each radio antenna station consists of two perpendicular aligned active SALLA antennas, which receive the radio signal from air showers. The preamplified radio signal is transmitted to local cluster centers of the Tunka-133 DAQ, where it is filtered, amplified and digitized. To reconstruct the radio signal it is crucial to understand how it is affected in each of these steps. Thus, we have studied the combined response of the antenna, with its directional pattern and the analog electronics chain, consisting of a Low-Noise Amplifier and a filter amplifier. We discuss the hardware setup of Tunka-Rex and how a description of its response is obtained. Furthermore, we estimate systematic uncertainties on the reconstructed radio signal due to hardware effects (e.g., slight variations of the electronics properties). Finally, we present background measurements with the actual Tunka-Rex antennas.